Politico’s Mathias Döpfner, and Sam Knight Reports from Qatar

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2022

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The staff writer Sam Knight was in Qatar recently, reporting on the World Cup, where, despite years of controversy, a familiar rhythm of upsets, triumphs, and defeats has taken hold. But he finds that the geographical shift toward an Arab nation may benefit the sport. Plus, David Remnick talks with Mathias Döpfner, the C.E.O. of the German news publisher Axel Springer, which acquired Politico for a billion dollars last year. Döpfner relishes taking provocative stances, but has been a vocal critic of media outlets that he says are increasingly catering to partisan audiences. “I think it is not about objectivity or neutrality,” he notes. “It is about plurality.” Politico, Döpfner says, is taking “a kind of contrarian bet: if everybody polarizes, the few who do differently may have the better future.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.5	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:12.5	The World Cup and Cutter this year was preceded by years and years of controversy,
0:17.6	charges of shameless corruption and mistreatment of migrant workers. But then the
0:23.0	games finally began. Staff writer Sam Knight reported for us on the tournament.
0:30.0	The first ten days of the World Cup in Qatar was soccer as it is rather than as you want it to be.
0:36.6	It was venal, closed, and transactional. I saw some
0:42.0	terrific goals. I drank Coke and paid with my visa card. I lined up for the Adidas store.
0:48.9	Everything was brand new, air-conditioned, and covered in an almost invisible layer of pale desert dust.
0:56.5	Sam just got back from Qatar and he shared some of his impressions from on the ground and in the
1:01.6	stands. This was my first World Cup. Yeah. Grown up with the tournament watching it on TV,
1:09.1	but this was the first time I'd ever traveled to see it in person.
1:12.2	There was something about this particular edition in Qatar,
1:14.6	which was just irresistible to try and explore.
1:20.9	You know, the whole world was in Qatar,
1:23.3	because you did feel like you had kind of,
1:26.2	you were shifted somewhere else on the world's axis
1:30.3	and the center of this tournament was the Middle East
1:33.3	and the Arab-speaking world.
1:36.3	And they'd go to the, you know, the Suk in Doha.
1:42.3	There'd be the call to prayer as you kind of walk to a game or as you came out.
1:49.1	It rang to Moroccan fans and Tunisian fans and Saudi fans and Qatari fans.
	...

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